Bill Rathje Character Analysis

Bill Rathje was arguably the first “garbologist,” and he earned this title by taking a research approach to trash that borrowed techniques from more well-established disciplines like archaeology. In 1973, Rathje founded the Garbage Project, which looked directly at evidence from garbage to try to disprove popular misconceptions about waste. By sifting through waste, Rathje attempted to find objective ways to measure public policies about trash, as well as finding out information about people that was only possible to obtain through trash. Though not all of Rathje’s endeavors were successful, on the whole, he and his teams helped people visualize just how huge the scale of the U.S.’s trash problem was, as well as provided other important insights about what people consume. By 2011 Rathje had retired and was pessimistic about the U.S.’s future, believing that it was in the declining phase of a civilization and its resources would soon become scarce. Still, his work was taken up by a new generation, including former proteges like Sheli Smith. Rathje represents the necessity of fully understanding a problem before one can successfully tackle it—and how important unconventional research methods can be in this endeavor.